Jeffrey Rotter

Jeffrey Rotter holds an MFA from Hunter College where he studied under Peter Carey, Colson Whitehead, Colum McCann, and Andrew Sean Greer and was awarded the Hertog fellowship to perform research for Jennifer Egan. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and young son. The Unknown Knowns is his first novel.

Books by this Author

PRAISE

“Perceptive and humorous… Goes beyond the obvious sendup to explore the private and at times desperate ways his characters strive to secure their own homeland… Rotter’s imagination is formidable and fresh." — Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Book Review

“Perceptive and humorous… Goes beyond the obvious sendup to explore the private and at times desperate ways his characters strive to secure their own homeland… Rotter’s imagination is formidable and fresh." — Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Book Review

My Life in 8 Words

Author Revealed

Q. What is your motto or maxim?

A. I'm presently accepting submissions.

Q. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?

A. In dry socks.

Q. If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?

A. I’m interested in attaining powers that, while not qualifying as “super,” are arguably “exceptional.” For instance: partial invisibility, the ability to shrink to three-quarters my normal size, or the dragonlike capacity for breathing fire, but only through my nose, and only enough to light a cigarette.

Q. If you could meet any historical character, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?

A. I'd like to sit quietly in a corner of the cave when the first human said the first word for love.

Q. If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your days, what would it be?

A. That nutrient powder that tastes like anything you can think of, whatever that's called.

Author Voices

June 21, 2010

When my friend, the very funny writer Jason Porter, asked me if I like sandwiches, I had to say yes. Sure, I like them. When he asked me if I like to talk about writing, I had to answer no, not really. He said, “Me, either.” So we agreed to talk about writing for a little while and then get a sandwich. But then we ended up talking mostly about sandwiches. And Martin Amis’s underpants. The result is an interview for the terrific new lit magazine Tottenville Review.

March 23, 2009

The zeitgeist has been gorging itself on chicken nuggets these days. And I’m doing my humble part to keep the breaded chunks of flaky white meat under the warming red lights of the cultural buffet. The main character in my book, The Unknown Knowns, has an epiphanic scene with chicken nuggets at an old waterpark in Colorado. So when we were planning a book party, nuggets had to be on the menu. I posted this request on FaceBook and got plenty of nugget suggestions. But I got something more edifying: a rare glimpse inside the arcane world of the stroller set. And a love story.

January 30, 2009

The Doberman The links between vanity and cruelty are not secret. We all know about Chinese foot-binding. And I suspect those places advertising 100 percent human-hair extensions get their stuff from Third World hair farms. But recently I had a rare opportunity to see vanity and cruelty side by side in one elegant and ugly tableau.

One bitter January morning I was on my way to work, dressed in a heavy down coat and fingerless gloves. I was thinking about how fingerless gloves would be perfectly adequate if only I had no fingers, when I almost stepped in a pile of bloody gauze. I would describe my state of mind as perilously psyched. I’d...
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